Demowen's Blog at LumberJocks.comhttp://lumberjocks.com/Demowen/blog
Sat, 17 Oct 2009 04:57:55 GMT20 Steps to a Checker Board... a beginners guidehttp://lumberjocks.com/Demowen/blog/11443
I am currently finishing an education class so that I can teach Technology Education (shop class). My last assignment was to create a project that checks for the understanding of the previous lessons. I chose to do my lessons on shop tool safety and usage so it only fits to do a project to show off those new safety skills.

I know you all are experts here ;) so I thought you might enjoy picking this apart! I created a simple project that uses the majority of common shop power tools. Here it goes…

Assessment Project
You (the student) will build a checkers board with checkers pieces to demonstrate you knowledge of tool safety and procedures. Follow the procedure list below in order to create your checkerboard.

1. Crosscut two 4 ½” wide rough boards 36” on the Radial arm saw. Make sure that the boards are of two contrasting species (oak and walnut, purpleheart and yellowheart). Use any two that you choose but make sure that they contrast one another well. These will be boards A and B.

2. Using the Radial arm saw, crosscut a 4 ½” wide rough board to 40” long using the Radial arm saw. This part is for the border, you may use any species you like. This will be board C.

3. Joint two perpendicular surfaces on each board.

4. Plane the material to 7/8” using the thickness planer.

5. Rip parts A, B and C to 2” wide on the table saw. You should now have 2 of each piece.

6. Crosscut parts A and B in half using the miter saw. You should now have 8 pieces 2” by 18”. (excluding part C)

7. Align all 8 pieces of parts A and B parallel to one another. Be sure to alternate the species every other. Glue and clamp these parts together. Be sure to clean up excess glue once it has filmed over and easily peels off. Wait at least 30 minutes before removing clamps and at least 24 hours before machining. This is now part A/B

8. Once the glue up is cured, scrape off any missed excess glue. Flatten the board with the jointer and planer where necessary. sure to put part C through so that it is the same thickness as part A/B.

9. Using the Radial Arm Saw, or the Table Saw with a crosscut sled, crosscut part A/B into 8- 2” strips.

10. Align the strips parallel to one another, flipping each strip to create a checkerboard pattern. You may wish to use the biscuit jointer or doweling jig to assure proper corner alignment. Glue and clamp as in step #7.

11. Repeat step #8 making sure that the grain is facing the correct direction. If a large drum sander is available, this machine is best. A hand plane is a possible alternative to flattening the checker board.

12. Now that the center checkerboard is complete, it is time to create the border with parts C. Crosscut the two C parts from 40” to 18” and 16”. (two 18” and two 16”, AKA C1 and C2)

13. Using a dado stack in the table saw, create a tenon on both ends of part C1 that is 1” and ¼” thick. Only cut the top and bottom. Do not cut the sides!

14. Use the router table with a ¼” straight bit to create a groove on parts C2 that spans 2 1/8” from the ends and is 1” deep. These grooves should be centered and on the same edge. These are the grooves that accept the tenons from C1.

15. Glue and clamp parts C1 to the sides of part A/B so that the grain is parallel.

16. Slip parts C2 onto the checker board so that they are perpendicular to the grain. Drill two ¼” holes over top of each tenon spaced 1” apart and 1/2” from the edge of C2.

17. Remove part C2 and widen the dill holes using a 5/16” bit so that the ends allow for wood movement.

18. Place a small amount of glue on the center, as well as the drilled holes of parts C2. Slide over the tenons and fill the holes with a ¼” dowel. Cut the dowels flush to the surface.

19. Route a decorative edge on the frame of the checker board.

20. Sand, sand and sand again up to 180 grit or higher. Apple a few coats of shellac, polyurethane or another clear coat to finish the checker board.

Instructor’s note: Almost every tool is replaceable with another tool. The radial arm saw specifically may be replaced by the table saw with a cross cutting sled.

Remember… IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS….. ASK! It is always better to ask first than to have to apologize later, especially when it comes to being able to count with 10 fingers!

The student will be graded upon their effort and determination, safety, accuracy, shop clean up and attitude during this project. Each of the 5 sections are worth 20 points.

What do you think? Would you have added anything? Would you have taken anything away? Was it clear? Don’t worry, I already submitted it so you don’t need to worry about helping me cheat :). if anyone decides that they want to make one of these simple checker boards let me see the finished product. Thanks and enjoy!

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Sat, 17 Oct 2009 04:57:55 GMThttp://lumberjocks.com/Demowen/blog/11443DemowenDemowenWine Rack Expedition #9: Inlay, wood burning and the finish line.... YAY :)http://lumberjocks.com/Demowen/blog/9802
Well folks, it has been quite a while since I’ve been able to get on here and talk about the project. If you haven’t read any of the previous blogs, this is a wine rack that I built for my brother’s wedding. If you want the basic construction, see the prior posts. From here on is the little decoration details…

I hope I don’t have too many pictures ;). I think I’ll let the pictures do some of the talking for me but I want to capture the whole process.

At the very beginning of the project I intended to do an inlay of a grapevine. I bought a pack of 50 veneer samples for about 25 bucks. I practiced on a few domestic species and got mad at it. I decided then to do a wood burning with a small solid inlay instead of veneer.

Start out with a design in mind. My girlfriend was kind enough to draw this for me. Quite talented if you ask me! (points scored :) ) I copied her picture so that I didn’t mess it up, then printed it out to the final size.

At this point, it is time to get comfortable…. Grab all the essentials for the job. fine point pencil, the picture, a sharp razor blade, a little tape and a nice tall glass of Sweet tea (southern style or bust! another one of my girlfriend’s talents)

I like to tape the picture directly to the piece of wood. Piece by piece I cut out a little bit on the line and trace that edge with a pencil. If you have a bigger burning it would be a good idea to borrow a slide projector and a clear piece of paper to project onto the wood and just trace the lines that way.

You can see that is is just a little bit of patience and a lot of relaxation!

Notice that I am cutting the line out on its edge. That way, when I trace the void, the pencil mark will be exactly where it is supposed to be and not bumped off to the side.

When you cut, its a good idea to put a finger close to where you are cutting in order to hold the paper down. If you don’t you will encounter some paper ripping instead of slicing. Just be careful to place your finger in a location that is safely away from the blades edge. Also, cut towards the edge with your blade. if you don’t then the paper tends to buckle before it cuts. Here is what happens if you don’t do that. Not a big deal if you can figure what the line is, but too bad and you might have some trouble.

Trace the line. Self explanatory.

Now, I’m not gonna tell you how to wood burn. I was never taught how and I think I liked learning by trial and error. Just get some scrap wood and practice a small design. Once you get better you can start adding curves and shading. Just don’t touch the hot end!!!!!!

Now that I burned the lines of the grapes (with her help) it is time to start adding some shading. I think we could have ended here but I wanted more detail.

She looked at the original design and colored in the shading with a pencil. When you copy a picture it is difficult to get the shading to copy correctly. The design may have changed slightly too so it was a good idea just to transfer the shading by eye.

Isn’t she beautiful?!

And very carefully executing the shading…

Just in the middle of shading so it looks a little rough. It’s good to just do a little at a time and then go back over the whole thing because if you shade too much in one area you don’t want to have to do it over the whole area.

BURNING DONE….. INLAY START…..

I was by myself when I did this so there won’t be quite as many pictures as there was for the wood burning. Sorry.

I’m not sure what the purpose of this picture is. I am obviously pointing at the area I’ve cut out but I think I was just showing off my cut. Not even sure how I did that.

Brittany drew a flower to go with the grape vine (not really a grape flower.. shhh don’t tell!). I taped it to a piece of yellow heart that was about 3/8” thick. I cut it out the pedals individually on the scroll saw so that the pedals had the grain moving away from the center of the flower. Once I did that, I held each pedal down in its final location and traced it. You can trace it with a knife, but I had a hard time holding the pedal and tracing it with a knife so I just used a pencil. Once you have the lines drawn, just slightly scrape the wood with a sharp knife. Make sure that you are on the inside of the pencil marks! I have a dremel tool with a router base that I hogged the material out with so it is a good idea sever the top fibers of the wood. When you get close to the sliced line you will see the wood fray upward in a type of curly motion. When you get right to the line that fray will immediately disappear. (Marc Spagnuolo has a great blog on this with a sun inlay.)In areas that were too tight for my dremel I used the smallest chisel I could (which happened to be a #2 3mm Phiel spoon gouge.)

If everything is just a tad too small you are in business. Just sand the inlay piece to a very slight taper or touch the cut out part with a little TLC. Or do what I did, see if it’s close, put a drop of glue in the bottom and hammer it home with a wooden or rubber mallet! You might notice that there is a very thin gap between some of the pedals. That’s okay. Wait till you plane and scrape it flush to deal with that. If it is much bigger you may want to consider gluing a shaving from a hand plane into the gap. When I planed this flush the gap disappeared somehow.

I finished the inlay with a 1/4” drill bit and a 1/4” dowel for the center. Then I put a couple of coats of Spar Varnish down. Why spar varnish? I don’t know, I have a lot of it that I got cheap. I’d do something else if I did it again. Just make sure that if you will ever have alcohol near your furniture (I don’t recommend drinking) then make sure that you don’t use an alcohol based finish on like shellac.

Now I guess that it is time to just show some beauty shots…

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Thu, 25 Jun 2009 03:17:03 GMThttp://lumberjocks.com/Demowen/blog/9802DemowenDemowenBack Burner projectshttp://lumberjocks.com/Demowen/blog/8339
Howdy everyone, I thought I’d post a few projects that I’ve had to put on the back burner for a while.

The first one is on the back burner simply because I’m not sure what to do with it! If you folks have any ideas on what to do with it, I’d love to hear it! This is a solid oak hand hewn barn beam that is about 5 or so feet tall. I don’t want to make a bench out of it. I think it should be a centerpiece someday. I’d make a manltle but I don’t have a fireplace. This came from the family farm so I think it really ought to stay in the family. I think that it can be cleaned up with a pressure washer in order to bring out the oak color without messing up the fact that it is hand hewn.

The next project is the pedestal base of a cherry table. I bought a solid cherry round table that was about 1.5” thick for $10 at a yard sale. The pedestal that was on it was puney so i decided to make somthing a little more sturdy. I basically made a solid octocon out of some old cherry flooring boards. I cleaned everything up and milled it down. I glued everything up with some band clamps to get the octogon. Once it was together, I made this jig to suspend the piece while I worked on it…The intent of the jig was to allow me to set a router on top to hang above the pedestal. If I put a straight bit in and slowly turned the pedestal on the frame to round it out. Once the piece was a cylender in all the right places I added a riser block to the front and cut out some of the top rail in order to more easily access the pedestal. It was just a matter of marking and filing from there. It is all shaped but needs to be sanded to a finishing grit.

I need some ideas for the feet now. I picked up some hanger bolts to attatch them but am not sure what shape to go with. I was thinking about making them look like tree roots growing from the pedestal wavy. What do you guys think? I’m open to suggestions, criticism and encouragment.

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Tue, 14 Apr 2009 04:43:46 GMThttp://lumberjocks.com/Demowen/blog/8339DemowenDemowenWine Rack Expedition #8: Finishing Process Begun.....http://lumberjocks.com/Demowen/blog/8305
Howdy Folks, It’s been a little while since I posted the last blog on the wine rack and it will probably be longer yet till I get the next one out. Here are a few quick pics and such on the finishing process I’m experimenting with…First I taped off the parts that will be a future glue joint. I don’t want the finish the obstruct the glue’s ability to bond the two surfaces together.

Then I put on a coat of some good ol’ BLO..

After a day or so (or untill totally dry) I mixed up some….with…in a glass Jar.I used about a 50/50 mix but I after the first coat or two I thought it was a little thin so I added some more poly to thicken up the mixture. Also, in the future, I think I would put the mineral spirits in the jar first because the poly is thicker and will take less time to mix if the thinner material is on the bottom. This really is working out great so far. I can just wipe it on with a clean rag and barely have to sand it at all between coats. I’d always rather wipe on a finish than brush it on, but thats me. I hate painting and brushing. Wiping feels a little more personal to me. I think it can also be a little therapudic to wipe on, but maybe thats just the fumes ;). This deal with this is to do as many coats as you can stand! I’ve done three so far.

So after this all dried (I have many more coats to go) I moved it into another room because I have to help the lady with a big school project, -to synthesize two archetectural styles into one. I helped her chose both Classical Greek and Asian archetcture into a jewelry chest. This was quite a challenge to draw up!

Here’s what I started out with…

I only drew one half because I stink at making the two sides match in sketches. I’ve sinced changed my plans a little to be more feasible to complete by the 23rd (OH BOY!) What do you guys think? Succesfull synthesis? I’d love to get some opinions on this one!

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Sat, 11 Apr 2009 06:55:13 GMThttp://lumberjocks.com/Demowen/blog/8305DemowenDemowenWine Rack Expedition #7: The end in sight... yet...http://lumberjocks.com/Demowen/blog/8162
Well Folks, I did what I could today. It was a long day of work and hospital visits so shop time was certainly limited to a few hours late into the night.

I left a bit of a glue mess on my back assembly last night so I paid the price for it today.Now, that picture was just to show the assembly without clamps, but this one should be better…and some more….I had a few pictures of my lady checking my sanding job but they all were too blurry. She walked around it and made sure I didn’t miss any pencil marks or glue spots. I went ahead and finished the back assembly with the BLO.

Now, I had a big internal debate about when to do the last glue up and when to finish. I hate finishing beyond the first coat, so I wanted to make it as easy on myself as possible. I decided to go ahead and glue up the front to back rails on the back side for a couple of reasons. 1. It is easier for me to finish inside and out when I’m not reaching in between rails. 2. If the side rails are attatched to the legs, I don’t have to worry about finding room to suspend them. 3. I wanted to see what it looked like together and finished.So I glued up the legs to the back…This time I made for darn sure that all the pegs fit great and the grain was matched up properly.Just a note, if you have clamps that will mar the surface of your work, some leather patches work well. Make sure the smooth side is against the work or else you might have little rough spots in your finish. I’ve also used these leather pieces to spread the glue, it works great and peels right off later.Once I finished glue up, I decided to take care of a little problem that everyone always has- glue seepage in corners.and the solution… a water soaked rag wrapped around a flat head screwdriver.Now that the back was glued up to the side rails and the rails were finished with BLO, it is time to pretend that the project is finished!!!

I like my selection of wood for the table top back splash and the top decor. I tried to bring just a hint of sapwood into it since the table top has a hint of it too.

Now, not everything is glued up, there needs to be a couple of coats of poly on top of this yet and the table is nowhere near ready with all the inlays to do on it.But if it were done….

We didn’t have any wine in the house. I could only find 3 glasses too.sparkling cider does the trick though!I love the grain on this rail!

So, before I had to crash (and do this blog) I wanted to plane and chisel the butterfly (Dutchman, bow tie..).

I think it looks pretty good! Any gaps are small enough to fill in with sawdust and glue.

I pulled the full assembly into the furnished side of the basement so it can dry in an area a little warmer than the unfinished side.

Next up, lots of poly (or whatever else people convince me to use), lots of work on the table top and inlay. And one more glue up (after the finish). Thanks folks, bye bye for now!

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Thu, 02 Apr 2009 07:16:08 GMThttp://lumberjocks.com/Demowen/blog/8162DemowenDemowenWine Rack Expedition #6: Glue ups and some other stuffhttp://lumberjocks.com/Demowen/blog/8155
Well Folks, it’s been a super-productive day for me (as productive as a full time student with a part time job, a ministry, a woodworking hobby and a girlfriend can be :) ).

Before I glued up the rails to the legs I had to take care of some cosmetic details. I measured 1” from every outer bottom corner of the legs and up 3” in the opposing side. I drew a line to connect these marks on the edges and cut them out on the band saw for the foot detail. As you can see, the band saw left things pretty rough, but after a little bit of sanding, no problem. No matter how precise I try to be, there is always human error, none of these things line up exactly on the meeting edge, Luckily the sander took care of that right quick… sorry for the blurSo when they were all pretty much done, you can get an idea of what this will do to the overall piece…

At this point I felt confident enough to get to scraping, sanding and filling. Now, I don’t know what everyone else does, but since I already scraped all the surfaces earlier, I just jumped right up to a 220 grit on my Random Obit sander. I know that is probably not the right thing to do but, honestly, the surface felt great. I guess the scraper really just prepped it for me that much!

Now, I can’t stress to you how important it is to dry fit everything before you go to your glue ups. I say that with emphasis because I didn’t on my first step. I thought “ah, it’s all good enough” and had to pay for it with unneeded stress in the glue up. A couple of my dowel pins were a hair too long so that it wouldn’t pull in tight. I had to pull the rail out and saw the tip of the dowel off. Now I got glue on my saw, a waste of time in a glue up and just the pain of it not being exactly right. I glued one side and then put the dowels in to glue the opposing side. And, of course, since I didn’t dry fit each peg, some of them were too difficult to line up in a short amount of time. So, some of the rails (just one or two) have only one dowel on the left side. I could line one up, but not both. It is okay thought because it is still going to be strong enough for it’s use and will be parallel to the legs since the other side has all the dowels in it (luckily). So I finally got this bad boy clamped…After a brunch break I glued up the rails to the back right leg. I only dry fit the left side in at this time because it was too many dowels to handle at once. I dry fit all the dowels before hand and did not have as many problems. Notice that I ran out of long enough clamps? I had to improvise with those black and yellow clamps. I thought it was funny.

When that glue up was finished I cleaned up any glue spots left over on the front assembly (legs and rails). Once everything was hunky dory I taped up the dowel holes that will receive the side rails.I did this so none of my finish will get into the holes and prevent the glue from bonding with the opposing surface. I wiped on a liberal amount of Boiled Linseed oil all over the front assembly. I figured I might as well do this while I have full and easy access to both sides. Look at the difference between the oiled and un-oiled rails…and then, after a few minutes I came back with a dry rag to wipe up any excess and half buff the finish.oooh shiny!

Now it is about enough time to remove my clamps from the glue up. This time I set the clamps on my bench and set the assembly on top of it, I thought it would be easier this way, it was.

While that glue up was drying I decided to work on some problem areas for the table top. The top has some hairline cracks on the bottom of one edge. I wanted to nip that in the bud so I used my brand spanking new Dremel router kit to do a butterfly inlay. That thing actually worked out great! You can see that the butterfly is still sitting proud of the surface, I have to plane it down once the glue cures. If anyone needs to see how that is done, just let me know and I will explain it later. Pretty easy.

Well folks, that’s all I got done today. After all that I had to get going to work. To come is probably some more glue ups, more BLO finish and perhaps getting the table top ready. Eventually I want to get to the veneer inlay! Soon enough…

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Wed, 01 Apr 2009 06:45:33 GMThttp://lumberjocks.com/Demowen/blog/8155DemowenDemowenWine Rack Expedition #5: Glass rackshttp://lumberjocks.com/Demowen/blog/8141
Well folks, I think it was another productive day in the shop.

The objective today was to get all of the parts created, but not necesarrily 100% ready for glue up or finish sanding. Misson accomplished- sort of.

The first obstacle was to figure out how I wanted to join the wine glass holder rails. They are positioned horizontally (like a shelf) where all the rest of the rails to this point have been vertical (like a skirt table). I’ve been using a self-centering doweling jig for my joints but all the other joints connected at two points on the middle vertical line of the legs. I could still use the doweling jig normally but I could only use one dowel, and I didn’t want to do that since there is the potential for the rack to slip around.I thought about doing a shallow dado cut to receive the wine glass rail with a dowel reinforcement but I can’t do that if I want all the rails to be the same width. I decided to go ahead with the doweling jig, using a shim to offset the holes, that way I can use two smaller dowels.

The shim on the left…and then moved to the opposite side…to result in…

Now, if the jig was able to open wider I would have made the holes further apart, but it didn’t so this will have to do. These two will at least keep the rail from rocking like it could with just one dowel.

Now to the wine glass rails…My sketch up drawing had rails with a flat face, but I thought it would add an element of depth to carry the ark theme over to the rails. So I cut the front ark and placed the holes to receive the wine glasses accordingly. This was actually rather challenging since I had no idea what size wine glasses might be put on this rack. I tried to do some reconnaissance work but didn’t find out much. I figure that if the base of the wine glass is any bigger than 3.5-4” in diameter then it won’t deserve to be put on the rack (perhaps this will also be a limit to the volume of what he can drink too ;) ).

After the math was figured out the best I could, I drilled the holes at 1”diameter. The slot to the hole was then cut to a little under 3/4” Note that I chose to load the glasses in from the front. I thought the back loading was a neat idea but I didn’t like the fact that it could possibly be hard to access them since the rack will probably be pushed up against a wall.

Here’s a shot of checking the dowel joints…I really like the look the curve will give this…

So I guess i have a question to whoever might be reading this.What do you think about chamfering the legs? Round over? or just beak the edge with some sandpaper?

Upcoming… lots of sanding, a couple glue ups, working on the table top inlay and fitting. Thanks folks!

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Tue, 31 Mar 2009 06:03:18 GMThttp://lumberjocks.com/Demowen/blog/8141DemowenDemowenWine Rack Expedition #4: Result of Monotonyhttp://lumberjocks.com/Demowen/blog/8084
Well folks, 160 dowel holes later, I’m ready to call it quits. I don’t mind hard work, but repetition drives me crazy! Here is a snapshot of some of those dowel holes…Now, notice the markings on the end grain. This is important to me so that I don’t keep having to second guess myself when I am putting things together. I have those pieces marked ‘L’ or ‘R’ for left or right and numbered from top to bottom. I mark all the pieces on the right side so there is no question as to which side is the front or the top.Here are the dowels on the legs, awaiting their rail counterparts..Now, one leg only has one dowel in it for a reason. When I line them up, it is really a pain to get them all. If I can do one side for a glue up, then focus on the other side later -then that is okay with me!

After the dowels were in, I decided it was time to clean up some mill markslook at the speed! (haha)

While I was scraping my brains out, I convinced the lady to start transferring some pattern marks to the rails.Unfortunately, the ark on the bottom of the rails gave us a lot of problems. I think we got it worked out in the end. I tried to just use a pencil tied to string to get the ark, but it is near impossible to have accuracy since you are bound to pull too hard, tilt the pencil, or have your string slide on your pencil. So for future reference, I will have to make a jig for this kind of patterning.

Once the lines are down and checked 20 times for accuracy, it is time for a lot of this..You can see some of that numbering take place here in the dry fit. Notice I am not done sanding to the line, we were just getting antsy to get a peek of the final project.

and a lot of this…Okay, I know I made all those templates for a reason! honestly, by the time I would have set up my router and clamped each piece, I would have sanded right to the line with the drum sander. I followed my sanding up with a little scraping to remove any spots that I might have not gotten smooth. (I am a poor college student so I don’t have a router table yet (or an oscillating spindle sander))

We had to part ways for the night soon, so we dry assembled the pieces just to get a vision for the next step (after cleaning up those lines). I think it will come together nicelyLook at her go!

Now, when I actually glue this thing up, I will only do one part at a time. Trying to do all this at once seems like craziness! But, all said and done, here is what she looks like so far….I think it looks better than I thought it would! I can feel some changes in the design coming on though…

This time I threw the rough top on to get an idea of the final product. I planned for an overhang from the rails, but the legs will not have much at all. I was going to notch out the top and the back rails to slip fit into one another, but now I think I am just going to notch the corners out entirely and forget about slip fitting them.

I also got an idea from the arch on the bottom of the rails. When I make the wine glass holders for the top (that span in-between the back legs) I think I will incorporate that arch horizontally on those rails too. That way the glasses won’t be lined up in a perfectly straight row, the ones in the middle will be set back a some and give it an added depth. (I think/ Hope)

Now, to another matter…I bought some Boiled Linseed Oil and tried it out for the first time ever. I LOVE IT! I think it will really draw out the character of the wood. The previous pictures all kind of look like the same color scheme, but when you add some wetness or oil to it – POW! The character comes out! Here is a snapshot of the cherry and ambrosia maple unfinished.. BLAH!And with one or two wipe downs of BLO…
I left an unfinished one piece of maple in there to show you the immediate difference. I can’t wait to see the cherry with the maple after it darkens in age! The maple spalting (I guess you can call that a spalting of sorts) really shows up nicely when it has the oil on it.

And last but certainly not least.. a random project that my girlfriend is working on in-between my needing her help,Not bad at all so far! I barely even gave her any direction. I think she is starting to catch the wood bug! :)

Well folks, thanks for reading this mess of ramblings of mine. I’d love to hear feedback, both good and bad please! I can’t get any better if you all don’t offer some advice or criticism right? Thanks!

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Sat, 28 Mar 2009 06:34:47 GMThttp://lumberjocks.com/Demowen/blog/8084DemowenDemowenWine Rack Expedition #3: Dowling and.... more dowlinghttp://lumberjocks.com/Demowen/blog/8054
Well, unfortunately there isn’t a whole lot of content to go through for this step since it is pretty much doing the same thing over and over again. I marked out on the legs where I want the rails to go. I had to alter some measurements from the plans since the rails are now 3.5” instead of 4” wide. I wanted to get all of the front and side pieces out of the same board and this was the price I paid. No biggie, will look about the same in the end.

So the lines were all laid out, I decided to dowel all the rails into the legs since I am on a slight time crunch. Mortise and tenons would have taken too long, so this seems to be a strong, good looking, and quicker alternative. I go my self centering dowel jig from Grizzly (birthday gift) and it is turning out to be quite a help! Compared to some other doweling jig prices, this one was pretty good at around $30-$50.

Here is a picture of the pieces marked and ready for dowels. Sorry, but you can’t really see any layout lines…

I have 5 rails that wrap around all four sides. Two dowels to each side of the rail. And two drilled holes for each dowel. That means I have to drill 160 holes for 80 dowels. A snapshot of me doing one of the 180 holes that need to be drilled…. I look so enthused…

I got the front legs and the front rails all drilled out. Time for a dry fit!!!It was surprisingly difficult to line up 10 dowels into 10 holes on each side, so one side only has 1 dowel per rail in it for now. When I glue up I think I will do it one side at a time, too much difficulty during a glue up is unneeded stress. I don’t do stress. (notice the lovely rust-colored freezer behind the dry fit)

The fit was pretty good, I have to cut the dowels a little shorter because I didn’t figure in the fact that the drill bit is tapered at the tip. I set the depth to 1/2” but the actual depth without the taper is closer to 1/4”-3/8”. Oh well, easy fix. The picture also has mineral spirits on it to get a small idea of what the finish will look like.

Speaking of finish, I bought some Boiled Linseed Oil (BLO) today at work. I’ve never used it so I’ll have to try some samples. Any recommendations on the finish??! I thought BLO with shellac but I can’t do that since this table might be near alcohol (shellac=alcohol based, bad to spill booze on it). So perhaps a BLO with a couple wipe downs of Poly and Mineral Spirits mix.

Next up… Hopefully no more drilling… Some band sawing for shapes, some template routing with a flush trim bit and an immense amount of card scraping. (oh joy)

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Thu, 26 Mar 2009 07:26:47 GMThttp://lumberjocks.com/Demowen/blog/8054DemowenDemowenWine Rack Expedition #2: Rough Milling and setting up for detailhttp://lumberjocks.com/Demowen/blog/8041
Well folks, I’ve got almost all of my stock milled down and ready to go!

I went to the planing mill (Hicksville Planing Mill) and bought quite a bit of wormy maple. (I believe it is the Ambrosia bug that crawls in the wood and makes all sorts of colors in the surrounding wood. It is also called Ambrosia Maple)

I was in for quite a surprise! I was looking for some spalted maple, but this stuff was only $1.75 a B.F.!!!I bought all I needed (and then some), they even surfaced it for me at no charge!

I figure that this will look pretty nice with the cherry, especially when it ages.

I made some templates to cut out the different wine rack portions. I simply drew up the plan on the template and cut close to the line with a band saw. I don’t have an oscillating spindle sander so I just chucked up a drum sander on my drill press. Worked just fine!

and the bottom detail…

I ripped the large 8/4 cherry board into 3 strips for the legs. One strip was cut in half to be the shorter front two legs. I cut five 31” pieces (4 maple 1 cherry) for the front and sides. I wanted the grain to wrap around the front so I cut the front and side pieces out of the same board (7.5”, 16”, 7.5”). The back rail was from a different board because I didn’t have enough to make four back pieces. It doesn’t matter as much as the front three pieces anyhow.

Here are the pieces all laid out and ready for shaping and joinery.This shows the grain flow from the front to sides

Notice the chalk triangles. I do this simply to keep my pieces aligned and in order. You can see some mill marks that I will have to get into order here later with my scraper.

That’s about it for now, up to come… cutting the shapes in the rails, cutting the top, joinery and who knows what else.

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Wed, 25 Mar 2009 06:06:33 GMThttp://lumberjocks.com/Demowen/blog/8041DemowenDemowenWine Rack Expedition #1: Planning processhttp://lumberjocks.com/Demowen/blog/7972
Well folks, this is the first time I’ve ever attempted to document any project that I’ve done, so, hold onto your hats and hopefully I won’t make any major mistakes! I’ll attempt to bring you through the stages of my project with me!!

Dreaming Stage / Research StageMy brother’s wedding is coming up in about mid-May and I decided that I wanted to make a small (but tall) wine rack for him and his newlywed. I did some reconnaissance work and found out that his favorite wood is cherry, and I shall thusly use that as my main wood. I started the whole process scanning the web and, of course, Lumberjocks for some inspiration.

Two pieces have stood out to me for the majority of the project,

By drumpriest and…By Pheirendt

The first image was the piece that inspired me to do a wine rack in the first place. I love the fact that it will fit in a small apartment and still hold a ton of character. The second, I feel, simplifies the design process (in my own head) since I don’t have to fool with a cabinet door or anything of that sort. With the designs examined, (and believe me, I looked at a ton of others!) It was time to move on into what I call, the napkin stage.

The napkin stage is basically the first step in moving from inspiration to application. It’s where you scrounge around for the nearest writable surface and spill your thoughts onto it. This really helps you conceptualize the fist little budding of your own project. As you draw it, you may realize that it looks completely stupid. Don’t Worry! Just sketch it up again. This is where you put your own personal flare into the project and go crazy! I also marked the pieces with letters representing the woods I was planning on using (cherry and maple).

After you feel competent enough with your sketch up- its time for another sketch up! I downloaded Google Sketch Up for free and it seems to do the trick of getting all the dimensions ironed out. Plus it just looks cool.This is also the stage of the project where I get the wine bottles out and gather some critical dimensions to make the whole thing work. There are a few details left out, but only the ones that I need to figure out later.

One of the great things about putting it on the computer is, I can easily log this away and bring it up later if I ever need to make another one. Instead of jamming those napkins into my project folder, I’ll put a copy of the Sketch up model, cut list and basic procedures into one little section.

Cut List StageSpeaking of cut lists, I moved all the pieces around so I could more easily wrap my head around the material needs of the project.

After the fact, I would recommend putting the dimensions somewhere on the sketch up image so that you don’t have to piddle around with drawing them on later. I can’t remember why I didn’t, but there was a reason. I enjoyed the piddling on my lunch break though.

So I took the parts list and drew up my best figuring of what amount of lumber I would get in order to have minimal cut off waste (but not too little ;) !! ) This stage is absolutely essential to the final look of the piece since you might want to have pieces match. For example: The actual racks of my wine rack will be four pieces (2 sides, one front and back). I want the front three pieces to wrap around and have the same grain. I also don’t want to use too many separate boards because I want to have a pretty uniform color throughout.

If you can make sense of all that- Good for you!! I was lucky to understand it myself. The important thing is to understand it for yourself. I feel like I should note that I didn’t know what length of board I could get at the planing mill when I drew up the plans, so some of this has to be rigged on site at the mill. I have since found out that most of the boards are in the area of 8’ long.

Wood Selection StageNow, you can’t see it from my sketch up model, but I played around with a few different contrasting woods to get to what I wanted. I decided early on that I wanted to pair some curly maple ($3 a b.f. at my place) with some cherry. When I got there I saw the last bits of spalted maple go out with another customer. I loved it! I asked the fella what the cost on that was and when it would be back in… he roughly quoted me a price of $2.75 per B.f.!!! I’m still waiting for him to get more in. I spent a pretty penny on an 8/4 board of Cherry but I think it will be worth it to have solid, uniform legs on this piece, no laminations. The board is there behind the vacuum.

Milling StageI milled down everything but the legs to a smooth dimension. I’ll come back later and plane it down to finished dimensions later. What I wish I would have taken a picture of is how I marked the lumber for cutting. When the board was rough I drew on it with a piece of chalk so that I knew how I could cut it down to a manageable size to work with. If you want info on how to mill stuff down, check out www.thewoodwhisperer.com – Check out the basics videos.

Piecing StageFor lack of a better term, this is the stage where you start putting crap together. I put to parts together for the top of the wine rack. I doweled these two pieces together. I took a long time just trying to find the best way to put the two together so no one would even notice (later) that they were two pieces. You can see some mill marks on there that I have to remove with my card scraper. I wanted to get this done and out of here first so the lady can do her designing magic. (She is helping with $ and some planning/work for my brother’s wedding) I’m figuring on doing an inlay on the top of some grapevines with some woodburning. I asked her to draw something and this is what she gave me!...

Cool huh? I’ve never really done any big time inlays like this so, it should be interesting…

Thats about it for now!! Upcoming might be another trip to the mill to get the spalted maple and snap some photos of the place (if they let me) and working that massive board into legs!

What do you all think? Any design comments or suggestions? Lay it on me!